Electronic systems and circuits have made a significant contribution towards the advancement of modern society and are utilized in a number of applications to achieve advantageous results. Numerous electronic technologies such as digital computers, calculators, audio devices, video equipment, and telephone systems have facilitated increased productivity and reduced costs in analyzing and communicating data, ideas and trends in most areas of business, science, education and entertainment. Frequently, these advantageous results are realized through the use of information stored on a memory media and manipulated by a processing device. The configuration of the information storage can have significant impacts on the performance of an information processing system.
Numerous electronic devices include processors that operate by executing programs comprising a series of instructions for manipulating data in the performance of useful tasks. The programs and associated data are typically stored in a memory. Memories usually consist of a location for storing information and a unique indicator or address. Each location usually stores the same number of bits referred to as the memory width. When information is written to or read from a memory location the entire storage capacity of that location is committed to that piece of information regardless of whether the information fills the resources of that location. The utility a device provides often depends upon the speed and efficiency at which instructions are executed. The ability to access a memory and transfer information quickly and conveniently usually has a significant impact on information processing latency.
The configuration of a memory usually affects the speed at which memory locations are accessed. Certain types of memories built upon flip flop circuits, such as a register included in a processor or a random access memory (RAM), offer the potential for relatively fast information access. However, there is typically a direct relationship between memory access speed and cost, the faster the access the greater the cost. It is significant waste of valuable resources when storage capacity in a RAM location is not utilized.
In addition to information access speed having a significant impact on processing latency, receiving information in a convenient and efficient format is important. Information is often conveyed from one system to another system in a format that is convenient for a communication level or convenient for a first component, but may not be convenient and efficient at another level or component. Memories typically have uniform memory widths but the information stored in the memory rarely is the same size. Memory locations are often underutilized and filled with superfluous filler bits. Processors usually attempt to access certain information from a memory and memories that provide extraneous information slow processors down because processing resources have to be committed to identifying and extracting the relevant information. Incomplete or extraneous information usually makes programming instructions much more difficult because provisions and adjustment have to be made to identify and extract the valid information. If information delivered from memory is incomplete, the processor has to wait for and track additional memory accesses that contain the missing information. If there is extraneous information the process has to identify and extract the valid information. Overall, processing operations are often slowed when processor operations are committed to interpreting extraneous information.
What is required is a system and method that facilitates efficient utilization of memory resources and delivery of information in a convenient manner.